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ShadowFoxx writes "Time Warner Cable Inc. is launching an iPad application that plays live TV, becoming the first cable company to do so. The app will be free to download on Tuesday morning, but it will only work for people who subscribe to both video and Internet service from the New York-based cable company. Even then, it only works in the home, when the iPad is connected to the company's cable modem via a Wi-Fi router."

It's not a story of what this app does, it's a story of what this app doesn't do. It can't leave home WiFi, won't work while a passenger in a moving bus/train, it essentially acts as a hand-held TV only where you already can put a TV.

It's not a story of what this app does, it's a story of what this app doesn't do. It can't leave home WiFi, won't work while a passenger in a moving bus/train, it essentially acts as a hand-held TV only where you already can put a TV.

Just use Orb.com app. Now you can watch live tv (via your computers tv tuner card) anywhere you have a connection.

They're required to offer anything that should have been available over-the-air in the pre-digital days via Clear QAM. That means no History Channel and no Discovery, but then again, who would watch that crap when you've got six channels of PBS?

(Mind you, I'm not saying they don't encrypt those channels in some markets -- but they're not supposed to.)

Yup, the basic over-the-air stations are still available but the signal seems degraded. Petty Comcast crap of course but when they're the only provider where I'm at (can't even get the phone company out at our house without paying for several poles worth of cabling), we're kinda' stuck. If we didn't have our internet and phone through comcast, I'd switch to satellite.

It's not a story of what this app does, it's a story of what this app doesn't do. It can't leave home WiFi, won't work while a passenger in a moving bus/train, it essentially acts as a hand-held TV only where you already can put a TV.

Don't be silly. It's the same for any dedicated fan of any product - one someone associates themselves with the brand, rational thought goes out the window. There's nothing special about iOS folks doing it.

What I don't understand is why those networks - whose sole objective should be to make their programs available to the greatest numbers - keep on dropping arbitrary limitations on this thing... I just don't get it. Just stream the whole damn thing from every where to everywhere for god's sake !!!! You are already broadcasting it to the entire country OTA, what the heck could be the point of crippling it so much on any other medium !!!!!

The broadcast networks *contract* with the local providers to be able to provide the network programming in a certain area (and air their commercials).

So the existing contracts are what prevent "the networks" from doing it. (Plus, "the networks" have contracts with the PRODUCTION COMPANIES of the shows, often different networks entirely, about how they can show the shows.)

I'm not saying I agree with all of it, and as shows come up for new contracts, things like online streaming seem to be coming into the c

The content producers have required contractual obligations by companies like TWC that prevent them from doing things like making a way for you to view it from outside your home.

Do you know how much effort went into just getting the legal OK for TWC to give you a DVR... and then the outrageous amount of bullshit that happened to get network DVR allowed? And why you won't find things like a 30 second skip forward button on the remote with your TWC dvr...

I'm sure TWC is going to do what they can to maximize their profit, but its not always them that makes the restrictions, just like its generally not them that require you to buy package deal for channels, its the people providing the channels... that want to say they've sold just as many 'cooking network' subscriptions as HBO... so advertisers think advertising on the cooking network is worth what they are being charged.

Time Warner Cable is no longer a subsidiary of Time Warner, Inc. They continue to use the name as part of the agreement created when the companies separated. Part of the big drive between the separation was that being both an operator and a content creator was seen as a conflict of interest with the shareholders.

Advertising. To sell ad space, they need to be able to promise N amount of eyeballs for time period X. They can't do that unless they restrict how and when their content is seen. Which is why they are losing viewers--- more and more often, people feel like they should be able to watch whatever they want, whenever they want.

"Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app," Apple's statement read."Apple processes all payments, keeping the same 30% share that it does today for other In-App Purchases," the company said.

Later Tuesday, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller confirmed that those rules apply not only to newspaper and magazine publishers, but also to content sellers like Amazon.com, which offers a Kindle app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

So now Apple will demand 30% of your internet and cable bill or pull this App?

They would have to put an option to subscribe in the app and if you did Apple would take 30%. If you continued subscribing in the usual manner Apple would get nothing (beyond 30% of the cost of the app if there is one)

Maybe TimeWarner made a deal with apple and will be exempt.

Maybe they are trying to get this app out there so their customers will complain to Apple after the app is taken down in June.

I had a similar setup with an El Gato EyeTV tuner plugged into my Mac Mini AV server. It could stream live and recorded shows to my iphone and I could browse channels from the iphone. Cool thing was it worked over 3G as well. I was 30 miles away, in town and brought up CNN at lunch. Once it buffered, was smooth steady stream.

Daughter would use this setup to watch tv up in her room (just has computer with access to family iTunes library). With the iPad doing this, as well as now being able to access shared i

While I agree that the app would be immensely more useful if you could use it over 3G or on the free WiFi at Starbucks or at my friends house, I also believe that this app still holds a place for usefulness.

If your house doesn't have enough TVs for everyone and you all want to watch something different then this will come in handy. You can now watch TV while cooking in the kitchen without buying one of those little counter top TVs. You can go outside for a smoke break without missing any of 'the game.' You can watch TV on your patio while BBQing or supervising the kids while they swim in the pool. You can prop it up on your desk in your home office so you can watch while you work.

There are all sorts of places in and around a home that don't normally have TV access. If anything this could be a reasonable argument to a spouse or parent for justifying getting one "But mom, it's a TV too!"

You could always just jailbreak the ipad, use tcpdump to find out where the connections are being made and what ports, then modify the hosts file on the iPad to point to your firewall, set up port forwarding on your firewall and forward the ports to the actual server that is serving the streams.

Then you could use your iPad from anywhere to watch TWC. You might need to do some creative routing to watch from within your house tho...

because I can flip over to the news on the iPad while outdoors reading or the like. I can have it running in the kitchen when cooking, even turn it on in the morning in the bathroom while shaving or the like. In short, anywhere where it would be nice to have a TV but I am not willing to buy one. I looked into putting a TV behind the bathroom mirror but decided against it from a cost stand point. I do not have a computer or TV in the bedroom but an infrequent use item like the iPad might get a pass.

No no, it's so you can be charged for running up your internet connection bill at home by streaming video to the ipad to watch at 1024x576. At least the xoom, with a 1280x800 screen, can do 1280x720.

So wait... On one hand you semi-jokingly complain about the over charges they would no doubt apply for the amount of data it would take to stream at 1024x576, and then proceed to bash the iPad implying it's screen is too small by stating an even Larger video stream to a not-ipad as a good feature?!?

Man, Apple haters will go to any lengths

Try again. When people look at video streaming packages, they forget that their internet billing can also rise since they can exceed their cap. So that was my first point. My second was that if you're going to watch a movie, the ipad isn't the best option available in the current generation of tablets - far from it.

As for your point, do you have any proof that the video stream is smaller for the ipad? It doesn't look like it, since it will only work over wifi. It's more likely that the iPad wil downre

No. I use a portable device with a keyboard to post to/. because posting to/. requires a keyboard, at the very least a touchscreen. That is why I bought a laptop. But for watching TV in my home -- a completely passive act that requires neither a keyboard or a pointing device -- I already have a perfectly functional TV, and therefore don't need an interactive touchscreen device that's about one-tenth the size of my TV but costs almost as much. It's not "a portable device" if you're sitting on your living r

No. I use a portable device with a keyboard to post to/. because posting to/. requires a keyboard, at the very least a touchscreen. That is why I bought a laptop.

You could just use your computer, which was cheaper, and you're already required to sit down in front of it anyway. Sitting there at your desk with your laptop in your lap* just to post on Slashdot is just silly!

God's honest truth? I use Windows Media Center attached to my TV via component out, and for some reason it insists on capturing keyboard and mouse input on the secondary screen (the TV). I can no longer move the mouse to get back to my regular monitor. When I break out by pressing the Windows key, it messes up the aspect ratio on my TV; the TV normally has an anamorphic aspect mode, and Media Center understands it, but the regular Explorer mode doesn't. Windows Miracle #2782.

Watching your TV content outside the home has always been crippled by legal agreements between the content owners and distributors. See, if TV was available on the web without restriction, they wouldn't be able to charge the bar and restaurant owners the high per-TV rates they do now. So we're stuck with a fancy iPad app that turns your iPad into a small TV but only when you're on your home WiFi. Sure it could work over 3G, but that's not a deal Time Warner Cable wants to write... and by doing so may be protecting the space from somebody who does want to do such a deal.

It is free on Zattoo as well but delayed by I think 20 sec. The experience of watching a game live (e.g. soccer in Europe) is usually ruined when the whole neighborhood starts screaming while the players are still 20 meters away from the goal.

And its illegal to use OTA for public display of sporting events. I realize sports aren't big to slashdot users, but if you've ever watched any major sporting event like a NFL or MLB game, or a big race... the first thing you hear and see is a 'no rebroadcasting without permission'.

And its illegal to use OTA for public display of sporting events. I realize sports aren't big to slashdot users, but if you've ever watched any major sporting event like a NFL or MLB game, or a big race... the first thing you hear and see is a 'no rebroadcasting without permission'.

And its illegal to use OTA for public display of sporting events. I realize sports aren't big to slashdot users, but if you've ever watched any major sporting event like a NFL or MLB game, or a big race... the first thing you hear and see is a 'no rebroadcasting without permission'.

And its illegal to use OTA for public display of sporting events. I realize sports aren't big to slashdot users, but if you've ever watched any major sporting event like a NFL or MLB game, or a big race... the first thing you hear and see is a 'no rebroadcasting without permission'.

And its illegal to use OTA for public display of sporting events. I realize sports aren't big to slashdot users, but if you've ever watched any major sporting event like a NFL or MLB game, or a big race... the first thing you hear and see is a 'no rebroadcasting without permission'.

Thanks, but according to what you link to, it's still illegal, but the NFL won't enforce it under those circumstances. It speaks of a bill that was proposed but not passed. So it's not legal, and they can start to enforce it again any time they so choose.

The reason for the limitations has nothing to do with restricting their viewers, and everything to do with preventing people who do not subscribe to their service from freeloading. It's been proven time and again that you have to lock this shit down, or people will abuse it and ruin it for everyone. There are a hell of a lot of people who read the headline and thought they'd be getting something for nothing.

Its the content producers that prevent it from happening, not the distributors... which is still just as retarded.

But... much like counting netflix against your bandwidth usage, but not their own services, it also costs TWC more money to pipe video out onto the internet than it does to pipe it to their own network... just like long distance costs providers more than local calls.

I've been using a Slingbox [slingbox.com] for years. It streams your TV feed over the Net. You can even use it to control your TiVo, and change channels remotely.
Great technology for those who must have access to their boob tube when away from home.

OrbLive from Orb.com does the same. For Live tv it is not bad, even over 3G.

In which case, I can use my iPad to watch live TV while I am watching live TV on my TV. It's like picture in picture that I can actually hold and it doesn't stop me from using picture in picture AGAIN while I am watching.

The drawback is that this means no more beating off to Telemundo with the sound off, my hands are going to be too busy flipping around the iPad while I work the remote to capture the money scenes on the DVR and watch them in slomo.

The requirement is that if you allow online signups, you need to have in app signups as well.

My cable company doesn't allow online signups (yet, there was talk in the data center about allowing any unrecognized cable modem to be configured when connected to allow access/redirection to a signup page, but that never happened).

Sorry to spoil your American Pride: but I as a customer can use the application YELO to watch live Video on my iPad. ONLY with my Telenet account and ONLY at places that have Telenet as their provider. (My Home , Some customers , the Central Train station in Antwerp).

1) Only on an iPad- no other tablet, brand, or type of machine.2) Which means you probably also have to have a computer and one that can run iTunes (since that is used for install and updates).3) And you have to have Time Warner cable TV service.4) And only Time Warner Internet service.5) And be on the IP address registered to you.6) And only 30 channels.

How incredibly thoughtful, open, and flexible that is! What next? Require they watch all the commercials too... ooops....

But I wish they had the same app in a generic browser or at least a pc/linux/android aswell. Possible uses could include not having to miss a ball game because the wife wants to watch dancing with the stars (not everyone has 2 hdtv's). Or many times I want to watch tv in bed so I do the hulu thing. But it would be nice to see live local news in bed. It seems that al jazeera is the only streaming news source these days. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, I would love to find a free streaming local station servi

While it's not precisely the same thing, DISH Network's Sling Adapter allows users to watch anything recorded on the DVR, or to tune the DVR and watch live TV, on their PC (including OS X), iPad, or iPhone, regardless of their location (provided there's adequate bandwidth). It's $100 and has no service fee.

Using it within my house is great, I can carry my iPad around the house or the yard while watching TV. So far, attempts to use hotel wifi when I'm away have been a bust, the connections I've gotten just a

For what it's worth, TWC modems are 'free'. Probably built into the cost of the service? Yes, but that's transparent to the user. I pay ~$40/month for 7 meg service (it's in a bundle, so I don't know what the actual price is).
They (are trying to) do the same thing with ESPN360. They make you login to verify that you have TV service with them also, which causes a problem for Xbox 360 users.
They're trying to protect their ancient revenue stream. If I can watch live TV on my ipad, including sports, TW

No they are not free. I just canceled my service with them and they were charging a couple bucks a month for the rental of the modem. I now have FIOS for internet and no pay for tv. Much faster and way more reliable. I can actually get HD streams from netflix now. Verizon does block port 25 outbound and does not disclose that ahead of time.

You need to learn to tell the difference between free and hidden cost.

TimeWarner gives 'Free HD' to anyone renting an HD box... you can't get the Free HD without renting a box or a cable card, so its not free, its just the cost is hidden in the rental fees of something else.

The summary mentions that both your Internet and TV have to be through the local cable company. In one market, the one examined by the article, this is TWC. In another, it is Comcast. I don't see why other markets' cable companies wouldn't follow TWC's lead in this policy.